Once and Again (9 page)

“Things change.” He turned to look straight out the windshield, and a shadow slid into the hollow underneath his cheekbone.

She cleared her throat. “Do you have a long drive home?”

“No.”

“Good.” He was silent for a few moments more, so she unbuckled her seat belt and opened the door. Sea air wafted in, carried on the evening breeze. “I appreciate…all your help.”

“Consider us even,” he said. “But if that asshole even breathes in your direction again and I catch wind of it, next time you can bet I’m going to do more than just call the cops.” His way of saying
I have your back.

She nodded her thanks. He’d been there for her tonight when no one else had.

She slid down out of the truck, shut the door, and walked up the gravel path. Conscious of him watching her, she unlocked her house door and slipped inside. After a few moments, she heard him drive away.

Slowly, she dragged herself up the staircase, her body leaden. And when she finally got to her room, she simply lay down on the bed with her clothes still on and fell asleep.

Jane glanced at her watch, then raced down the linoleum-lined hallway of Eastbridge Elementary. Five minutes past seven.
Crap.
Why hadn’t she set an alarm on her cellphone?

She rounded the corner and made a beeline for Room 18. Outside other rooms, blue plastic chairs had been set up for tonight’s parent-teacher conferences, and there, seated calmly, on-time moms and dads were waiting.

Outside Room 18, no one was waiting.

She came to a skidding halt in front of the closed door and caught her breath. A mere second passed before the door opened and Andy’s teacher, a young, perky blonde named Miss Smart, escorted out another set of parents. They looked familiar, but since Jane had no time whatsoever to come to school events, she didn’t know their names.

“Thanks very much for this helpful update,” the dad said, shaking the teacher’s hand.

“Yes,” said the mom. “You’ve been just amazing this year with Jimmy. He’s grown so much under your tutelage.”

A bit embarrassed at overhearing something that seemed a little private, Jane glanced down…and realized she was still wearing her flour-covered apron. As fast as she could, she untied it, whipped it over her head, and stuffed it into her purse.
Just great.
Now her tee and jeans were covered with flour, too. Surreptitiously, she tried to brush the most offending white patches off.

“Jane?”

Jane jerked her attention back to Miss Smart. “Yes, hi. I’m sorry I’m out of breath. I thought I was late.”

“We’re all running a little late tonight, and as far as I’m concerned, you’re right on time,” she said with a smile. If she noticed the flour still clinging to Jane’s clothing, she did a good job of hiding it. “Come on in.”

Jane followed her into the classroom. Lining the walls were artwork, stories, and photographs. Jane picked out one of Andy’s pieces right away—it was hanging on the left side of the room, his handwriting so much messier than the other kids’.
One of these things is not like the others.

“Please, have a seat,” Miss Smart said, indicating a small chair directly in front of her desk.

Jane sat and placed her hands in her lap, waiting like an obedient child. She knew what was coming.

Miss Smart offered her a smile. “Let me start out by saying that Andy is a bright, intelligent boy. He’s oftentimes the life of the classroom. I love his humor. And he’s quite artistic.” She indicated a painting of a snail with a giant shell hanging from a clothesline above them. “That’s his there.”

It was a great picture—vibrant and full of color. It could have been in a children’s picture book, it was that good.

“He’s very talented,” Jane murmured.

“Yes,” Miss Smart agreed. “But we have a problem.”

Jane’s stomach dropped. “His reading?”

“We’ll talk about that in a moment. Unfortunately, I also have to tell you that his knowledge of basic math facts isn’t where it should be.” Miss Smart pulled out a sheet of paper that looked like a report card, except it was way more complicated than Jane’s had been, back in the day. There were rows and columns and check marks and numbers. “As you know, we’re following the Common Core standards, and by the end of the school year, Andy should have complete mastery of addition and subtraction of numbers from one to ten. He needs to have this down cold without thinking, but he still uses his fingers to count.”

“Why is that a bad thing?”

“Because we’ve moved on to numbers up to a hundred, and if he doesn’t know the basics, he’ll slip farther and farther behind. He needs more practice. The more time he has going over these basic facts, and the better he knows them, the better prepared he’ll be moving forward. As it is, I can’t give him threes and fours—the standard for first graders at Eastbridge Elementary—for his math work.” She shook her head. “Nor can I for reading. We talked about this at our last parent-teacher conference at length, but I have not seen a marked improvement in his reading skills.” She pointed to the report card. “He needs to be able to read smoothly and confidently, answer questions about the story, make inferences from the story, and recite the story back to me, using language from the story. Unfortunately, he just does not meet the benchmarks for mastery. I’m sorry to have to tell you this.”

Jane’s stomach was in a knot and no amount of breathing would make it go away. “I haven’t had time to practice with him,” she said tightly.

Miss Smart sat back in her chair. “Lots of emerging readers struggle to get to the next level. That being said, I truly do think it’s a question of practice. If he had more time…” Miss Smart trailed off. She sat forward again. “We’re almost at the end of the school year, and while Andy is having trouble, I don’t think he’s that far behind to warrant repeating the year. However, I will recommend him for our Reading Lab next year—this is for readers who are struggling to keep up, and even a few months in the Reading Lab could help him get back to the Common Core standard level.”

“Do I have to do anything to request it?”

“It’s already done. When he starts as a second grader in the fall, he’ll be assigned to the Reading Lab twice a week. Whoever he gets as a teacher will schedule his time there so it coincides with supplemental work, so he won’t miss anything important in the classroom.”

“All right.” If this was what it took to get Andy back on track, she was okay with it.

“We don’t have a remedial mathematics program, but I would
strongly
encourage you to review the math facts with Andy this summer. He’s such an intelligent child, I believe he’ll be able to handle the problem solving and integrated challenges we use to measure success with the Common Core, but that is predicated on a deep understanding of the necessary building blocks.”

“I’ll try,” Jane said, her voice tight.

“Look, I know you love Andy. It’s so obvious you only want the best for him. And I also know you’re time-strapped.” Miss Smart paused for a moment. “It’s my job to tell you all this, but more than that, I genuinely like Andy. I see his potential, and I want him to reach it. But parental involvement is key at this stage.”

Jane nodded. “I get it.”

They talked a few more minutes about Andy’s other academic work, and then it was time to go. Miss Smart stood and escorted Jane to the door. Before Jane left, she shook the teacher’s hand and found herself giving the same sort of platitudes as Jimmy’s parents had.

“Thanks again for your investment in Andy, Miss Smart. I feel really lucky to be in this district, and I’m glad Andy had you for a teacher this year.”

Miss Smart smiled. “You’re welcome. And I want you to know you’re doing fine. Andy just needs practice.”

Jane nodded and slowly walked back down the empty corridor, that sick feeling in her stomach back. It was Andy’s work that was lacking, yet she was the one who was truly being graded—as it should be. She was responsible for her son, and nothing his teacher had just told her was a surprise. Andy needed more time than she could give.

Already she didn’t watch TV, or exercise, or do anything for herself. She barely slept. There was nothing to give up, but somehow she needed to find a way.

She just didn’t know what that way was.

Late Sunday afternoon, as Carolyn was attempting to research new attorneys to help on the case, she got word from her dad’s doctors that he was ready to be released from Greenwich Hospital. She drove half an hour to get there, parked the car in the underground lot, and went to the general ward, where he’d been transferred after being in the ICU for a couple of days.

She hadn’t visited since last Thursday morning, mostly because she had to work and she knew he’d be released soon, but she felt guilty anyway.

But when she presented herself at the nurse’s station to get her dad discharged, the nurse on duty informed her that Mr. Bartholomew Rivington had already been released. She immediately pulled out her cellphone and dialed his number. It rang and rang, until he finally picked up.

“Hello?”

“Dad? Where are you?” Carolyn turned away from the nurse’s station so they couldn’t see her distress. “I’m at the hospital to pick you up, but the discharge people say you already left.”

“I checked myself out, Carolyn,” Bart Rivington said in his Kiwi accent. A dull roar whipped through the earpiece, sucking away his words as soon as they were spoken.

“Why would you do that? You knew I was coming to get you.”

“Jonah came to fetch me.” Jonah Vanderwoot was one of the few friends her dad had left—a guy who hadn’t followed Bart’s advice to invest with Worring—and had been a consistently generous host. Even though Jonah burned through money like water and probably wasn’t the best person to influence her dad while they were trying to figure out their financial issues, at least her dad wasn’t lonely when the two of them were together.

“Oh,” she said, deflating. “It’s fine. I just wish you’d told me.” Slowly, she pushed open the door that led from the general ward’s waiting area and walked down a long, linoleum-lined corridor. The fluorescent lights hurt her already aching head. “I guess I’ll see you at home, then.”

“I’m not at home.”

“Where are you?”

“We thought we’d drive up the coast. Take the ferry over to Nantucket.”

“To Jonah’s place? You’re not even coming home?”

“Not at present, no.” He sounded distracted, and Carolyn realized that Jonah must be driving them in his tiny death trap of a convertible.

“Dad! You just had a heart attack! You’re supposed to rest, take it easy.” She popped into a stairwell and headed down.

“And what better place to do that than at Jonah’s beach house?”

She wished she were surprised, but honestly, she wasn’t. It was just like her dad to go gallivanting off after something like this had happened, oblivious to how his actions affected everyone around him. There were dozens of other families affected by Worring’s betrayal—families her dad had referred to the financial advisor. But he hadn’t even acknowledged their losses; he’d just focused on his own.

She stepped through a set of sliding glass doors and strode down a corridor, knowing there was only one real way to get his attention. “I fired Yowls.”

“What are you talking about, Carolyn?”

“He was…inappropriate with me.”

“Whatever he did couldn’t be that bad,” her dad said, using his
everything’s going to be fine
voice.

“It was,” Carolyn said. “And that’s final.” Even the thought of interacting with Yowls made her skin crawl, and not just because he’d come on to her. Because she truly believed he didn’t have her family’s best interests at heart. What was worse was that her dad really wasn’t getting it.

Bart Rivington had been a young, strapping yachtsman representing New Zealand when he’d met Anelise Bellamie at a regatta at Briarwood. They’d eloped, but their families had eventually come around, especially when Carolyn, Blair, and Danielle made their appearances in the world.

But since Anelise died, Bart hadn’t paid close attention to what was going on around him. Worring’s betrayal had stunned him, and Carolyn didn’t think he’d talked with Yowls in months, leaving the girls—well, really just Carolyn—to manage their family’s affairs. And she was struggling.

She was outside the main entrance to the hospital now. Two disinterested security guards flanked the front door while a man pushed an old lady in a wheelchair slowly up the sidewalk. She walked a few dozen feet away from the door and pressed the phone tightly to her ear.

“I don’t think you quite realize how bad our financial situation is, Dad,” she said in a low voice. “It’s bad. Really bad. The house and my salary are all we have left. And Yowls really wasn’t doing anything to move the ball forward.” A twinge of pain formed behind her eye sockets, same as it always did when she was trying to discuss their finances with her dad. “Look, I don’t want to stress you out. You just got out of the hospital and I know what you’ve been through.”
What we’ve all been through.
“All I’m asking is for you to trust my judgment with respect to Yowls so we can move on.”

“What do you want to do?” His voice was a little cold.

“Hire another attorney.”

“You do what you want, Carolyn.”

“How am I supposed to pay for a lawyer?”

“Sell another vehicle,” he said.

She shook her head. “We sold all our cars last month.” She’d used most of the proceeds to pay creditors, and a small portion to buy a used clunker she could drive back and forth to Briarwood. “And we had to get rid of the yachts months ago to cover your sailing debts. While you were in the hospital, I did another review of our finances. We still owe hundreds of thousands of dollars, but we don’t have any income, except what I’m bringing home.”

“We have other assets.”

“None that Yowls mentioned. Maybe you could apply to be a consultant to one of the sailing teams?”

“Carolyn, we’ve talked about this before. I’m not interested.”

“I know it’s not the same as being on the water, but it’d be a good first step to getting back into the game.” The problem was, her dad really wasn’t fit to do anything except sail, and he saw anything other than that as unworthy of his time.

“I said no,” he snapped. “And anyway, I’m in Nantucket for a while.”

“I had to sell Grandma’s jewels,” she blurted out.

There was silence on the other end of the line. And then her dad spoke. “One does what one must.”

A wave of sadness washed over her. No talk about buying them back. No acknowledgment that they were her mother’s legacy to her. She’d martyred herself once again, and for what?

To be honest, they weren’t doing her any good in the vault and they were worth thousands of dollars. The money could easily be used to retain a new lawyer. One who might actually move her father’s case forward instead of trying to get into her pants. But it had been painful to do, and it was even more painful now that her dad simply refused to acknowledge the sacrifice.

Carolyn’s throat swelled up, but she forced herself to keep talking. “When will you be back?”

“It’s unclear. Jonah says he may stay on for several weeks, and of course, I’ll stay with him.”

There was no use pressing him further. “Okay. Just let me know what your plans are.”

“Goodbye, Carolyn.”

“Goodbye, Dad.”

Slowly, Carolyn walked back inside the hospital and took the elevator down to the parking garage. Somehow, she found her car. She drove home in the dark, barely knowing how she got there. On autopilot, she shut the garage door and went straight downstairs to the wine cellar. It was nearly barren now, the hundreds of bottles down to only a couple dozen. After Worring had screwed them over, her dad had been drinking every night to the tune of a bottle and a half right up to the evening when he’d suffered his heart attack. In the back of the wine refrigerator she found a lonely bottle of Prosecco. Her favorite.

Or at least it used to be.

Not even bothering with a glass, she came up out of the cellar, grabbed a cardigan and a blanket from the back of a leather chair in the family room, and walked right out the back porch door down to their semiprivate beach, shared only with the other houses on this small peninsula. Sea air whipped her face and the tears that had been threatening to spill pricked the corners of her eyes. She wiped them away, but the stinging sensation remained.

God,
what a wreck she was! And what was worse, she didn’t even have the right to be such a wreck, wallowing in the shadow of her formerly privileged life. She’d had the world at her feet and she’d squandered everything. Now she’d finally stepped up.

Too little, too late.

So she was going to drown her sorrows in a bottle of bubbly, wipe the slate clean as best she could, and move forward. Because she had to. Her daily mantra: keep going. If she could make her father understand exactly what they were up against, maybe he’d step up to help, too, instead of living just for himself. If he could keep his stress levels down. And if not, she’d just continue to try to keep everything afloat. She owed him that.

She walked to her favorite spot, right at the edge of her family’s dock, which jutted out a little into Long Island Sound. A lone, green bulb from the lamp at the end of the dock provided a dim light that extended only a couple of yards. If she looked down the beach, she could see other tiny lights glowing, demarcating other docks. The night was cloudy and chill, the perfect foil for her mood. She laid the blanket down and pulled on the cardigan. She was still cold, but she’d get warm once she started drinking.

Carolyn had just peeled off the foil top of the bubbly when a loud creak sounded on the wood. She turned around fast.

Jake Gaffney strode toward her and she scrambled to standing, not really wanting to look up at him. He was wearing a dark, long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of jeans. The scruff on his face was darker now. It looked good on him—played up the roughness that was always simmering just under the surface. It had always been there, hadn’t it? At least now, she could see him for what he was.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded when he’d gotten close enough.

“I live here.” He pointed to a house three down from her own. “There, actually. Bought it once I knew I’d gotten Briarwood.”

Of course he did. It was hard to see how her life could be any more pathetic. Jake Gaffney owned the old Mayhew mansion and she was hanging on by a thread in her crumbling, old place. If that wasn’t a reason to drink, she didn’t know what was. Without saying anything, she simply sat back down.

“Mind if I join you?”

“Sure,” she said, motioning with the bottle. “Why not? I was just getting started.”

He sank down next to her and held up a bottle of scotch. “Brought my own. Nothing beats some Jack Daniel’s and a moonless night.”

“That was almost poetic.”

“Yeah, well, I’m in a fucking poetic kind of mood.”

“You’re in a mood, that’s for sure.”

The corners of his lips twisted up. He screwed off the top of the bottle and held it out to her. “Want some?”

She shook her head. “I’m good,” she said, untwisting the wire holding the cork down.

“Don’t let me stop you.”

She dug her thumbs under the cork and it went flying right into the water. “Oh, no,” she said, peering into the darkness. “I can’t even see it to grab it.”

“It’ll wash up on shore tomorrow.” He took a swig of scotch. “Littering. Bad girl. And I bet you’re going to drink straight from the bottle, aren’t you?”

He was teasing her, just like old times, and she played right into it. “Watch me.” Holding the bottle with two hands, she tipped it back and took a deep drink. The bubbles played over her tongue and tickled the inside of her nose. She swallowed, loving the familiar way the fizzy liquid slid down her throat. When she was done, she gave him a satisfied smile.

“Living dangerously,” Jake said, nodding. “See you ditched your pearls, too.”

A wave of sadness washed over her. It was finally sinking in, so she tilted the bottle back and took another long swallow. “I sold them,” she admitted. “Along with the rest of my jewelry. Hence the alcohol.”

He looked away and she couldn’t see the expression on his face. “You needed the money.”

She laughed, and the sound came out a little choked and a lot bitter. “Yes.”
Badly.

“Why are you even doing this? Your dad’s debts aren’t yours, and yet you’re living like they are.” He gestured behind him, to the house. “Sell it and leave. There’s nothing holding you here.”

“According to my mom’s will, I can’t sell it. Anyway, I promised her.”

“Promised what? That you’d throw your life away?”

“I promised to take care of him. Although I have to say I’m doing a pretty poor job of it. He won’t even come home.”

“So you’re here because your mom asked you to take care of your dad?”

“Partly.” Carolyn put the bottle down, drew her knees up to her chin, and wrapped her arms around them. “What would you do if you ran out of money?”

Jake laughed. “Take bigger risks. Double down, recoup my losses, and get back in the game.”

“No, I mean what if you were
really
out of money. And you couldn’t do real estate anymore. What would you do?”

“Get another job, I guess. I could go work for my brother. He’s offered.”

“Sounds reasonable,” she said. “You have skills and drive. So what do you think someone like
me
does when they run out of money?” Someone with a barely used education, who’d done nothing of substance for the better part of a decade.

“I’d say get some from your family, but in this case—”

“—that’s not happening. No, there really were only two options. You saw one firsthand in the parking lot the other night.”

“That fucking lawyer.” He took a swig of liquor.

“Yes,” she said, her voice sad. “I’m sure you can imagine what kinds of
offers
I’ve been getting.” She shook her head in disgust. “The other option was more palatable: get a job.”

After a long silence, Jake cleared his throat. “Would it make you feel better if I told you that I might give up some control of Briarwood?”

Her head turned. “What? You’re going to sell the club? But you just bought it!”

“Not sell it outright, just sell an interest in the property. A friend of mine asked to come into the deal. It’d mean I wouldn’t have full ownership anymore, but—” He shrugged and took another drink.